Premiere & CC users: a show of hands

Premiere & CC users: a show of hands

  • I rent the full CC

    Votes: 28 56.0%

  • I rent ala carte CC programs

    Votes: 6 12.0%

  • I parted ways & edit with other software

    Votes: 5 10.0%

  • I still edit on CS6 or earlier

    Votes: 11 22.0%
  • Total voters
    50
Scott F

Scott F

Pug Life
I'm just curious where everyone is a few years after the introduction of Creative Cloud.

For or a while, I was working for a company and using their credentials. I've recently returned to freelance and had to get my own subscription. Since pricing is important and I don't need every program, I am personally just renting Premiere. I am just in a spot where I can't work w/o it. I really could use the latest After Effects, but right now I'm going to have a go with CS6.

I wish they would create a production bundle for significantly less than $50 per month....akin to the creative suite.

Poll is up, but feel free to weigh in with your opinions on the value and usefulness of CC. Hey, it will give Gabe a chance to complain about CC.....haven't heard anything in a while.
 
Last edited:
Never, ever, plan to move to CC for anything but PS/LR combo. Actually, I'm still using PS CS6 and bought the LR6 license, so I haven't even started using CC for those!

Unless of course, Adobe ends up dropping their price on CC as more (and better) competitors enter/enhance non-subscription alternatives. Just about to start playing with Resolve, and when the Affinity for Windows beta is released, I'll be giving that a try. Now, if someone would only come out with a true LR alternative (in regards to the powerful cataloging features... there are lots of RAW photo editors out there).
 
I was on CC, because it was affordable and offered access to all the stuff I was using (Premiere, AE, PS, LR, Audition, Story, Encore). For a time, I was happy and life was grand. About a year ago though, things began to change. The software started becoming buggy and crash prone (both on Windows and Mac - home and work respectively) and I was starting to outgrow After Effects as my shots were getting too complex to keep track of in a layered system. I thought about it and decided that since I'm a filmmaker rather than a video producer, I should look for software conducive to that. After trying demos and spending about a month getting to know what's out there, I have now adopted Avid Media Composer/Nuke/Resolve/PS/LR/Pro Tools/FadeIn/DVD Architect. I've downgraded my Adobe to the photography package and I can subscribe to the Avid products for $50 each a month. FadeIn is a one time $50 with free updates, so the only real big purchase was Nuke, but I've been watching Natron and will start using that once they get Blender's tracker integrated (Fusion lacks a clean UI while working with the nodes, so I'm not a fan). And I got Resolve Studio free with my Ursa Mini.

I have nothing against Adobe or their cloud model, they just couldn't keep up the quality of their software or offer what I'm looking for in software.
 
I've been a happy CC user since July 2012. I use Premiere, Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects, Audition, and Encore for video production, and InDesign and Illustrator for graphic design. Yes, there are some bugs here and there, but overall it's treated me well these past few years, and been a lot more affordable than purchasing individual programs for all the things I need (I remember purchasing FCP 7 alone for $1000 back when I was on a Mac). I realize others don't use nearly as many of the Adobe products I do, but for my purposes it's been excellent.

The fact that the Adobe tools are cross platform is incredible, and made it painless for me to switch from Mac to PC in 2014 in order to save even more money building my own workstation. I like Mac OSX better than Windows 10, but the price difference between a Mac Pro and a comparable Windows desktop was just too big to ignore. Having all my projects in Premiere meant I could still work on them on my new Wndows box.
 
Thanks for the feedback so far.

Regarding my current setup(s) I have a macbook pro which I use primarily for travel edits. Yosemite OS paired with PP2015 is working wonderfully. I just did a quick turnaround project which was like 18 green screen interviews cut into 6 short videos. Absolutely no crashes whatsoever, BUT there were some issues of lag while the program looked for media a few times, which sucks. (disconnecting the Thunderbolt cable can reek havoc on my system) VERY quick renders via Media Encoder.

Like I said, money is an issue. I just laid out for a new camera, insurance and a few other items all at once. $240 annually I can deal with, but $600+ kinda makes me cringe. Well, they got me for a year anyways while I explore other options. Totally interested in investigating Resolve as editing software. I think there will be plenty of rival options in the near future, as mentioned.
 
Scott F said:
I'm just curious where everyone is a few years after the introduction of Creative Cloud.

For or a while, I was working for a company and using their credentials. I've recently returned to freelance and had to get my own subscription. Since pricing is important and I don't need every program, I am personally just renting Premiere. I am just in a spot where I can't work w/o it. I really could use the latest After Effects, but right now I'm going to have a go with CS6.

I wish they would create a production bundle for significantly less than $50 per month....akin to the creative suite.

Poll is up, but feel free to weigh in with your opinions on the value and usefulness of CC. Hey, it will give Gabe a chance to complain about CC.....haven't heard anything in a while.
Click to expand...

Haha....well yeah, it's no secret that I'm not a fan (in related developments I got
rid of cable TV a long time ago, and I drive a car with 130,000 miles on it because
it's paid off.....I try to keep my monthly bills to almost nothing....it's one reason I've
been able to stay in business in my tiny market.)

Look, Adobe makes great stuff. And I will even admit that the 'subscription/rental'
method works for plenty of people. Which is cool. I just got a little fed up of
people saying things like 'If you can't afford $50 a month.....you must be doing
something wrong with your business.' Newsflash.....I could AFFORD to pay
an African witch doctor $50 a month to shake a bone rattle over my head to keep
the evil spirits away from my business, but that doesn't mean it would be very smart
for me to do so. I'm doing no work with anyone who 'requires' the use of CC.
So I'll just continue to use FCP X, Motion, Compressor, Resolve 12.5 and my
old version of CS 6. Between all of them....I can get the job done. And over
the past few years, I have saved enough money by NOT subscribing to CC,
that I could buy myself a new camera, a new computer, or a few new lenses.
Works for me.
 
Last edited:
When I'm not managing a production studio I'm a returning university student, which means I get the student license. Which is a pretty nice deal.

Once that honeymoon ends, I might switch to Premiere only. It kind of depends how much work we have coming in. Since most of the editing isn't done by me these days, having a personal account separate from the company account might not be sensible. Even the current price is, to be honest, a little difficult for me. I'm not exactly wealthy. I just have a couple of expenses I need, given a lack of alternatives, and this is one of them. As I'm typing this my wife just said, for an unrelated conversation "God I missed having Photoshop installed". So I guess I'm not getting away from Adobe anytime soon.
 
I've got the full subscription - its a business tool and a fairly small amount of money each month. I've never had a problem with the price, only with the gun-to-the-head ransom-style rental scheme. I still wish they had an option to buy-out a perpetual license of the current release after a certain period (eg, once every 24 months), so that you can still open up previous projects years down the track if you ever stop the subscription.

One thing that really irks me is that collaboration never seems to work seamlessly. The compatibility between versions, and even dot-point releases, is so inconsistent that I'm never able to collaborate without one or both of us having to perform some variation of updating/rolling-back/installing a previous version before we can both share projects - a massive inconvenience given how much they've promoted the collaborative facets. It only works seamlessly if absolutely everybody in the workgroup perpetually exists on the most recent dot-point releases at all times, which of course nobody does - due to my following point.

The new releases often seem rushed and buggy. Adobe promoted the benefits of more regular updates, and now it seems they're rushing to put new releases out in order to fulfill this promise - at the expense of stability. The end users have practically become the beta testers. It has become common practice among mission-critical professionals to not update until all the bugs have been patched after 6 months.

Adobe have done a great job of creating suite of software that does everything a professional needs (at least, 95% of them, anyway), while completely ignoring one major priority of working professionals: stable, reliable, offline workstations.
 
I've been a subscriber since CC started and I've got no complaints outside of the usual feature requests. It seems to be getting a lot of traction in my neck of the woods (former FCP 7 places switching to it).


deltoidjohn said:
I've got the full subscription - its a business tool and a fairly small amount of money each month. I've never had a problem with the price, only with the gun-to-the-head ransom-style rental scheme. I still wish they had an option to buy-out a perpetual license of the current release after a certain period (eg, once every 24 months), so that you can still open up previous projects years down the track if you ever stop the subscription.
Click to expand...

I'd like an option like that too but, long story short, due to post-Enron accounting regulations in the US that govern publicly traded companies Adobe can't offer that.


One thing that really irks me is that collaboration never seems to work seamlessly. The compatibility between versions, and even dot-point releases, is so inconsistent that I'm never able to collaborate without one or both of us having to perform some variation of updating/rolling-back/installing a previous version before we can both share projects - a massive inconvenience given how much they've promoted the collaborative facets. It only works seamlessly if absolutely everybody in the workgroup perpetually exists on the most recent dot-point releases at all times, which of course nobody does - due to my following point.
Click to expand...

AFAIK the collaboration has never worked across different versions of the apps. I don't know how many times in the CS days I would try to open up an AE project that was sent to me only to have it be from a newer version. That's not really unique to Adobe though, off the top of my head the only company that has good forwards/backwards compatibility is Avid.

It has become common practice among mission-critical professionals to not update until all the bugs have been patched after 6 months.
Click to expand...

That used to be SOP but now that software updates (for everything from NLEs to operating systems to mobile apps) come fast, furious and 'free' people seem to update instantly (even if they are in the middle of a project!)... and then get mad when there is a bug (and there's always a bug).


Adobe have done a great job of creating suite of software that does everything a professional needs (at least, 95% of them, anyway), while completely ignoring one major priority of working professionals: stable, reliable, offline workstations.
Click to expand...

Not everyone has the same experience but I have no qualms about PPro's stability. It's on par with what I generally get using MC or when I used the old FCP.


-Andrew
 
adkimery said:
I'd like an option like that too but, long story short, due to post-Enron accounting regulations in the US that govern publicly traded companies Adobe can't offer that.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Though I fail to see how this would be any different than, for example, a phone plan. You get a contract for a phone lasting 24 months, and at the end of the 24 months you own the phone. You can choose to renew your contract and receive a new phone or you can keep using the phone from your previous contract obligation free.

I know that is not a direct analogy but the point is if Adobe wanted to make perpetual licenses available within the CC system they could do so with a few tweaks to the wording of the contract.

adkimery said:
AFAIK the collaboration has never worked across different versions of the apps. I don't know how many times in the CS days I would try to open up an AE project that was sent to me only to have it be from a newer version. That's not really unique to Adobe though, off the top of my head the only company that has good forwards/backwards compatibility is Avid.
Click to expand...

And AFAIK no other company has spewed forth as much marketing material regarding collaborative environments as Abode has with CC. If they advertise it, they should deliver it in a real way. Even if that means a simple "Export to CC2014" or similar option which removes any incompatible elements and saves it as a new, more accessible project file (and no, EDL's and XML's are not the same as this).

adkimery said:
That used to be SOP but now that software updates (for everything from NLEs to operating systems to mobile apps) come fast, furious and 'free' people seem to update instantly (even if they are in the middle of a project!)... and then get mad when there is a bug (and there's always a bug).
Click to expand...

People are updating software because Adobe tells them it is a safe and good idea (even if they are in the middle of a project).
 
deltoidjohn said:
Interesting. Though I fail to see how this would be any different than, for example, a phone plan. You get a contract for a phone lasting 24 months, and at the end of the 24 months you own the phone. You can choose to renew your contract and receive a new phone or you can keep using the phone from your previous contract obligation free.

I know that is not a direct analogy but the point is if Adobe wanted to make perpetual licenses available within the CC system they could do so with a few tweaks to the wording of the contract.
Click to expand...

The phone and the service plan are two separate things. You can own the phone but you can never own the service.

If Adobe wanted to do what you are suggesting then they'd have to do what Avid has done which is have two different product lines. The subscription to Avid MC is one product line and the perpetual license to Avid MC is another product line. If you spend $1300 on an Avid MC subscription there is no way to convert that into a perpetual license. You seem very concerned over versioning and Avid's perpetual license plan is much more prone to versioning problems/conflicts than Adobe's subscription only offering, IMO.

Adobe's business model gets discussed a lot and if you interested in reading about the some of the functional differences (from a business perspective) between offering a perpetual license and offering a subscription you can check out the following links.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/378/11285#11285

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/378/10827

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/378/10841



And AFAIK no other company has spewed forth as much marketing material regarding collaborative environments as Abode has with CC. If they advertise it, they should deliver it in a real way. Even if that means a simple "Export to CC2014" or similar option which removes any incompatible elements and saves it as a new, more accessible project file (and no, EDL's and XML's are not the same as this).
Click to expand...

'Collaborative' and 'backwards compatible' aren't the same thing. Again, little/no backwards compatibility is not a problem unique to Adobe. Try opening up a FCP 7 project in FCP 6 or trying to mix and match round tripping between Final Cut Studio 1 apps and Final Cut Studio 2 apps. The dynamic linking between AE, PS and SpeedGrade is real and I think you'd be hard press to finding anything that tops it (though SpeedGrade doesn't look like it's going to be around too much longer). The new connection between Resolve and Fusion might be similar but I haven't used it first hand.



People are updating software because Adobe tells them it is a safe and good idea (even if they are in the middle of a project).
Click to expand...

Adobe officially tells people it's a good idea to update mid-project w/o backing up or anything like that? I found that doubtful. When CC2015 dropped I remember Adobe specifically saying to *not* bring large projects from CC2014 in 2015 because there might be issues. At least the Adobe products can be installed side by side so it's simple to go between different versions. Avid, on the other hand, can only have one version installed at a time.

All software has bugs. Always has, always will. If people want to be first in line to update then that's their choice but it's widely known to be risky. Like I said, SOP for decades has been to never update mid-project and if it's something like an OS update never do it w/o backing up your computer first.


-Andrew
 
deltoidjohn said:
I still wish they had an option to buy-out a perpetual license of the current release after a certain period (eg, once every 24 months), so that you can still open up previous projects years down the track if you ever stop the subscription.
Click to expand...

adkimery said:
I'd like an option like that too but, long story short, due to post-Enron accounting regulations in the US that govern publicly traded companies Adobe can't offer that.
Click to expand...

Sarbanes Oxley is a fabricated (and false) excuse as to why they can't offer free updates to perpetual licenses. Even if it was true (it isn't... more in a moment on why) why do they need subscriptions to do updates? It's not like they do much updating other than their once-a-year annual release. Remember that the ability to provide frequent feature updates was the #1 reason they gave for moving to the subscription model. Like the S-O excuse, the frequent updates turned out to be B-S:



When should we expect the next annual release... June 20, 2016?

Back to S-O. It wouldn't prevent them from updating features mid-release under perpetual licenses. You can read a great post explaining why that is here: http://www.phirephoenix.com/1463/hey-apple-stop-hiding-behind-sarbanes-oxley/ The tl:dr version is that if you do your accounting correctly, you can offer free updates with new features without violating S-O.

Even if S-O did prevent free updates (really, it doesn’t!) it still wouldn’t preclude them from also doing annual Perpetual licenses.

adkimery said:
If Adobe wanted to do what you are suggesting then they'd have to do what Avid has done which is have two different product lines.
Click to expand...

Sure. Why not? Bug fixing would add a (very) small cost, but they can account for that in their pricing. You gave an example of Avid doing this. I'm wondering..... Are there any other companies that do both Subscription and Perpetual versions of the same thing?

Actually, Adobe itself does this! Lightroom is released both ways, and yet they still do updates to both without getting into S-O hot water.
 
After owning CS through the last release 6.x, I was shocked when Adobe went subscription. I fought that for a while, and then began running into the inevitable system conflicts which occur mixing legacy software on newer operating systems. In this case FCP7. I needed the latest OS to run my CAD software. For a while, I had 4 different bootable drives for different legacy OS. It was stupid difficult and was becoming unmanageable. I looked back at my CS upgrades and figured out that previously, I had been spending about a grand every two years on my CS license. So the increase to $600/yr wasn't much more. In addition, there was more Adobe software to buy beyond my CS license. I was also deciding what what NLE to migrate to since I no longer had much faith in the future of FCP. I decided to try CC and haven't looked back. The only part that is bad is the loss of the software if I quit my subscription. Realize of course that you still have access to your original source, and can play your edited cut, you just can't further edit. Now I get access to everything, and can selectively update as I prefer. In addition, I have found that while far from perfect, all the Adobe software is working better for me on Apple OS, they have improved things. ymmv. While it still gives me a red ass every month when I pay, I have to admit it is working better for me than the old business model.
 
keylight said:
Sarbanes Oxley is a fabricated (and false) excuse as to why they can't offer free updates to perpetual licenses. Even if it was true (it isn't... more in a moment on why) why do they need subscriptions to do updates? It's not like they do much updating other than their once-a-year annual release. Remember that the ability to provide frequent feature updates was the #1 reason they gave for moving to the subscription model. Like the S-O excuse, the frequent updates turned out to be B-S:

When should we expect the next annual release... June 20, 2016?

Back to S-O. It wouldn't prevent them from updating features mid-release under perpetual licenses. You can read a great post explaining why that is here: http://www.phirephoenix.com/1463/hey-apple-stop-hiding-behind-sarbanes-oxley/ The tl:dr version is that if you do your accounting correctly, you can offer free updates with new features without violating S-O.

Even if S-O did prevent free updates (really, it doesn’t!) it still wouldn’t preclude them from also doing annual Perpetual licenses.



Sure. Why not? Bug fixing would add a (very) small cost, but they can account for that in their pricing. You gave an example of Avid doing this. I'm wondering..... Are there any other companies that do both Subscription and Perpetual versions of the same thing?

Actually, Adobe itself does this! Lightroom is released both ways, and yet they still do updates to both without getting into S-O hot water.
Click to expand...
^^ This! And yet people continue to parrot Adobe's talking
points and say that S-O 'forces' them to do subscription only.
 
deltoidjohn said:
I still wish they had an option to buy-out a perpetual license of the current release after a certain period (eg, once every 24 months), so that you can still open up previous projects years down the track if you ever stop the subscription.
Click to expand...

Using the subscription model, you can do that now for a mere $70. The "buyout" price would likely be far higher.
 
deltoidjohn said:
One thing that really irks me is that collaboration never seems to work seamlessly. The compatibility between versions, and even dot-point releases, is so inconsistent that I'm never able to collaborate without one or both of us having to perform some variation of updating/rolling-back/installing a previous version before we can both share projects - a massive inconvenience given how much they've promoted the collaborative facets.
Click to expand...

To be fair, that's always been true. The subscription model hasn't impacted that reality.

And the collaboration option for PP really does require Adobe Anywhere. It's not fair to judge PP on this facet if you're trying to collaborate without AA.
 
Thanks for your input Jim.

I'll admit I haven't used AA, but I still wish there was an easier way. Is it beyond the realms of possibility to have a "save as CC20xx version" function?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top